


Children and Flowers Are Fragile Things

by RoseDelSol



Series: Harry Potter Short Stories [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Kind of a character study, this is pretty old tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 05:24:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8315572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseDelSol/pseuds/RoseDelSol
Summary: A brief look at how Petunia felt being the normal one





	

**Author's Note:**

> Repost from my tumblr - more short stories to follow soon

Again. Lily had gone out to meet that boy.

Petunia didn’t like him. Not at all. He was scrawny and his nose was way too big for his face. And she was sure he was making eyes at her sister!  
She didn’t know him, not really, and she knew she shouldn’t be judging him. But his mere appearance was just so, so… improper!

Then again, he was a freak, just like her sister.

Petunia knew he lived in the house at the outskirts of their village. Just looking at the place made her shiver.  
Just like the boy, the house seemed dirty, and melancholic. Yes, melancholic. Petunia was pretty proud that she had managed to put her feeling into a word, and a big word at that.

Despite her parents no longer looking at her twice, Petunia knew she was not stupid. Her grades were great, and she was actually second best in her class. Lily was best in hers, of bloody frigging course she was… But that didn’t matter to Petunia.  
She loved her sister, well, had loved her sister. But she wouldn’t love this freak her sister had become. Never!

And now Ma and Dad would send her big sis away for a year to learn more freak things. It was just not proper, not proper at all…

Petunia startled as she heard Lily’s happy giggle. Ducking lower behind the tree, Petunia peeked out from her hiding place to see butterflies dance around Lily’s head.  
Looking more closely she recognized that the butterflies were actually petals, dancing in the wind and painting patterns at the boy’s command.

Petunia huffed silently and grit her teeth to hide the sneer. She didn’t like that boy, not at all.

Lily seemed so happy around the boy. It was just not fair. Before she had become one of those freaks, Lily had been happy to play with Petunia, had been happy to sit in their small garden and draw pictures together.  
Lily had been perfectly happy without all these freak things. And without this boy.

Petunia’s face morphed into an angry frown. With an audible huff she stepped away from the tree and stomped towards the village.  
Lily called her name, but Petunia didn’t turn around. Lily called once again, but gave up when the boy spoke to her. He always spoke so lowly that Petunia could not hear him. But for sure he was saying nasty things about her, he always did.  
He was not proper that one, not proper at all. And Petunia was sure he used his freak-powers to make Lily stay with him, messed with her head, Petunia was sure of it.  
She had even voiced this thought to Ma and Dad, but they had just laughed at her. Said a child would not do such thing, and that their pretty little girl was far too clever to fall for such an easy trick.  
Ha! Clever, rubbish! Petunia thought. Lily was a freak, just like this boy. And Petunia knew not to trust freaks, not ever.

Two days later, Petunia was dropped off at their neighbours on her own request, while Ma and Dad were driving Lily to the train station. She did say goodbye to her sister, she was her sister no more. She was a freak now, at a freak school, doing freak things.

It was a long time before Petunia got to see her sister again. And when Lily came back she had changed even more.

Petunia decided to make her parents proud in Lily’s absence. Because surely, her parents must be sad. Their beloved pretty little girl was gone now, maybe they would see their other daughter again, just a little.

So Petunia started to study hard, and she became top of her class in not time.  
Still she studied harder, for school was always important to her parents, wasn’t it? They would be so proud when they would see her grades at the end of term.

Time passed by. Petunia studied. Christmas came.  
And with Christmas came the end of term, as well as the Christmas break at the freak school, for Petunia refused to even think the name of this vile and surely improper place.

The day Petunia came home with her grade sheet full of straight A+ (except for Sports, but Petunia never liked sports anyway, and neither had Lily so it wouldn’t matter to her parents, would it ?), the day she came home with her grade sheet neatly folded and put in an envelope was also the day Lily came back from the freak school.

Petunia had all but forgotten about it, because she had been busy studying, she had wanted to make Ma and Dad proud, so proud.  
So Petunia swung the door to the kitchen open, smiling brightly. “Ma! Dad! Look! I got my grades! Look!” , she called all excited.

Her Dad didn’t even look up, engrossed in Lily’s gesturing hands and bright smile and lively chattering. Her Ma hushed her, telling her to wait just a moment, she would be right there, and Petunia’s face fell, the smile gone in an instant. All the hard work of an entire term blown away, burned with this dismissing gesture.

Petunia turned on her heel and ran. She dropped her bags at the garden gate and ran. Through mud and snow and cold, cold winter air she ran.  
How she hated Lily. How she hated that everyone was always paying attention only to the perfect pretty little Lily. She was not special. She was a freak. Why couldn’t her parents see that?

Why couldn’t her parents see that Petunia was special (too)? That Petunia was clever and bright and worked hard to make them proud?

Petunia ran until she reached the end of the village, and then she ran some more. She didn’t realise when she came past the boy’s house at the outskirts of town. She just continued down the path until she arrived at the lake.

It had frozen over a few weeks ago, and the children of the village had taken to go ice skating on it. But now, so short after the end of school everyone was at home. Everyone was showing their grade sheet to their parents, and was getting praised for their hard work. Or scolded for their failures.

Petunia shivered and sat down in the cold snow under the tree she had been hiding behind in summer.  
She hadn’t realised the angry tears that were running down her face until the wind made them stand out icily against her hot cheeks. She sobbed. And heard an echoed sob from in front of her. She looked up.

The boy stood at the lake, without a coat, without a scarf, trembling from the cold and maybe something else. Malice reared its ugly head and hastily Petunia wiped away the tears, stepping away from the tree.

She called for the freak, and he wiped around. She could see the tears on his face, could see clearly how he tried to hide them behind his dirty fringe. And she laughed at him. Laughed because it was the only thing she could do.  
He was a freak, just like her sister. And for some reason Petunia didn’t understand and didn’t care about he was just as alone as she was right now. And that meant she could unload all her pain and anger and sadness onto this dirty improper boy.

Deep down Petunia knew it was wrong, but she didn’t care, couldn’t care no longer. This boy and the freak world he came from had taken her sister from her, had taken her parents’ love from her. And she would make him pay.  
Suddenly laughing and mean words seemed not enough anymore and she lunged forward to scratch her nails down his face. He stumbled back a step, overbalanced and fell on his backside. Petunia was on him in a fury, desperately punching him, inflicting as much pain as she could, hoping that at least some of her own pain would fade with it.

Sobbing she kept at it, her blows becoming weaker every time she raised her arms again. At the end she sat on his chest, shaking with sobs while he just looked up at her impassively.  
“It’s all your fault!” she croaked between sobs: “You took her away from me. You made her a freak. And now Ma and Dad only ever see her. They do not even realize I am still there. They.. They…”

She broke off, unable to put into words the sheer despair that ripped through her. The boy smiled weakly. “My father hates Mommy for sending me to Hogwarts. He hates me for being like her.”  
Petunia stared at him, suddenly silent, though her chest till heaved from with the echo of her earlier sobs. The boy spoke again. “He didn’t know. Just like your parents, just like you. And now he hates her, and she is but a shadow of the woman she once was. She hardly speaks a word anymore. He ignores me, except when he decides to beat me senseless. And her too.”

The boy laughed drily. “Don’t think you’re off worse than me. You have no idea what you talk about.” A silent tear ran down his bruised face and Petunia slowly reached out and brushed his hair from his eyes.  
He blinked slowly, then violently shoved her off him, as if he had realised what he had just revealed. He shoved her backwards and she hit her head against the tree trunk. Then he was off, speeding towards his house, or maybe the forest, or maybe nowhere just away and Petunia sat in the cold snow rubbing her aching head.

She didn’t know why she pitied him. He had brought this upon himself. His mother had brought it upon herself and her son. They were freaks, they deserved no better.  
Freaks deserved to suffer and to be hated and to be hurt. She hoped this boy would suffer more, much more in the coming years. And in this moment of despair and weakness, Petunia also hoped that her sister would suffer, that she would suffer just as Petunia suffered now. That everything would be taken from her. “I wish she’d just disappear. Disappear and never come back…” Petunia whispered to no one in particular, to the cold and the snow and the trees around her.

And maybe there was magic in Petunia Evans that day that heard her evil wish and turned the tides to fulfil it. Maybe that was what made Petunia Dursley such a bitter woman; because maybe she thought that she may have been at fault for Lily Potter’s fate, if even just a little…

It was a long moment before Petunia moved to go back to the house. She looked herself in her room and didn’t open the door until her father threatened to knock it down.  
And even then she did not speak, didn’t acknowledge her sister’s presence.

Petunia hardly spoke at all during Lily’s time at home, and she remained quite during the school year too. Her grades remained impeccable, but the spark was lost.  
What use was it to have good grades if not even her parents would ever bother looking at them.

Just like the boy who had lost his parents when it became known he was a freak, Petunia had lost her parents when the freak-gene showed in her sister. The difference was just that she had stayed normal, and was forgotten behind the bright and radiant girl that was Lily Evans.  
In the end it didn’t matter, not to her anyway, not anymore. Never again.

**Author's Note:**

> (Writing from a childs perspective is hard, I tried)
> 
> I wrote this... hm... probably two years ago in an effort to write one ficlet a day throughout November.  
> Needless to say it didn't work out (just as with my Prideshipping Week attempt, but I'm still hell bent on finishing that at some point this year... maybe Christmas)
> 
> I'm still quite fond of the stories I wrote then, and decided to use the little free time I have this week to upload / prepare the upload on AO3.  
> Some minor changes have been made, but nothing major - just a bit of dusting off, really
> 
>  
> 
> As always, Reviews & Kudos are highly appreciated - let me know what you think!


End file.
